Family Is Essential / Youth Is The Heartbeat Of The Church

Anyone here have a junk drawer in your house? You know what I’m talking about? The one that’s supposed to hold important things like batteries, tape, and scissors…

but somehow ends up holding takeout menus from restaurants that closed five years ago and 27 keys that open absolutely nothing.

Every now and then, you open that drawer, look at the mess, and say, “We really should organize this someday.” And then we gently close it and pretend everything is fine.

Some churches treat their core values the same way. They’re written down somewhere… maybe in a binder, maybe on an old bulletin… maybe in a dusty frame behind the fake tree in the foyer.

And every once in a while we say, “We should really get back to these.” And then… we quietly shut the drawer and head to lunch.

But core values aren’t meant to be stored away… they’re meant to be used. They’re the batteries that power what we do, the scissors that cut away the clutter, the tape that holds the church together.

And the good news? Unlike your junk drawer, they still work… if we actually take them out and use them.

Ours are on the wall just outside of this room… but if they just stay on the wall and never get into our heads and hearts… they’re not worth much.

This is why I felt the need to have this series over the past month and a half that we called, “At the Core”. The idea was to let everyone know, the reasoning behind some of the things that we do here at ECC.

Here is what we have talked about so far.

The Bible is the absolute standard of truth.

The church is the body of Christ.

Every follower of Jesus is a minister.

We must care about the lost and reach them.

Confess Jesus, repent of sins, and be baptized.

Live a life worthy of the gospel

And today we wrap up the series by looking at the final 2 core values.

If you want to know what a community will look like twenty years from now… don’t check the news, don’t poll social media, don’t survey the culture…

Just take a look inside the living rooms, dining rooms, and backseats of minivans. Look at the families. And look at the young people God has entrusted to us.

God’s design has always been that the family becomes the training ground of faith… and that the youth become the carriers of faith into the next season of God’s kingdom work.

You break the family, you weaken the church. You neglect the youth, and the church loses its pulse.

Today we’re going to look at two truths that are woven from Genesis to Revelation:

The family is essential to a unified community.

The youth are the heartbeat of the church.

Now… These two truths are not separate ideas. They’re two strands braided together into one cord… one mission... if you will. So… Let’s take a look at them together.

First… let’s see how…

1. The family is essential to a unified community.

I think it is safe to say that the break down of the family unit has been one of most impactful factors in the decay of our churches and our nation.

When you look at scripture it’s pretty clear that…

God builds through families.

There is a great story found in the book of Joshua where Joshua is near the end of his life, and gathers all of Israel at Shechem to renew their covenant with God.

He reminds them of God’s past faithfulness and then calls them to make a clear, exclusive choice to serve the Lord alone.

He said, you can serve the pagan Gods that some of your ancestors did or you can serve the God of Israel who delivered from Egypt and so many other things.

And Joshua said, But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15

He didn’t say, “As for me… and maybe my wife…”

He didn’t say, “As for me… and whoever else wants to join…”

He said my family.

Because Joshua knew something: it was his responsibility to lead his family spiritually. Just like it’s our job, men to do that too. And what Joshua knew, we need to know as well.

You can’t build a strong nation with weak families… and… You can’t build a strong church with divided homes.

Why do you suppose Satan has attacked the family unit so much? He knows it’s the backbone.

Cities with high rates of single parenthood have significantly higher total and violent crime rates, with some studies reporting more than double the rate for both violent crime and homicide compared to cities with low single-parent populations

Studies show a strong link between experiencing a "broken home" and later adult violence.